Hesitate
by Mrs.Monster
Summary: "What happened to leech?" she asked, unconsciously turning her face toward his hand. Jacob grinned. "What happened to Fido?"


_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Twilight. No copyright infringement intended.**_

_**Author's Note: So here's the thing. When mommybrook and luvmesomejasper were at my place to celebrate New Year's, mommybrook said that she wanted someone to write her a Rosalie/Jacob story. And luvmesomejasper was like, Hey, Lacy could do it, and I was like, okay. So that was that, and this is this and here it is. Love ya, Ethel.**_

_**Edited by the wonderful, the talented Mrs. EerieChastain. Many thanks to her!)**_

_**Hesitate**_

**..**

It was mid- October, but the blonde woman running through the North-Olympian forest with inhuman speed was bothered by neither the damp nor the cold. Her feet barely touched the muddy ground as she ran along, deftly weaving through trees, her hair streaming behind her like a banner. Silvery moonlight filtered through prickly branches, bringing the faintest of shines to her skin, and if someone were hiking through the forest and happened to catch a glimpse of her, they'd be sure to think they'd seen some type of Fae, or the beautiful Queen of some other ethereal species.

For Rosalie Hale _was_ beautiful. Some say her looks were only second to the succubae of the Denali family, and all, even the most reluctant, noticed. At the moment, she was splattered with mud and blood, having gotten a little carried away with the wildlife that her family of vampires chose to hunt. It'd been weeks since she'd fed, and had only gone tonight when the woman she counted as her mother, Esme, had forced her from the house. Esme had been right, of course. Aside from the fact she would do anything to protect the baby currently in gestation in her home, she could still very well be a danger to the human who carried the child.

Bella and Edward, the idiotic newlyweds. Tragic romance, moonlight and blood and roses, and it all made Rosalie want to vomit. Or at the very least rip apart a few fuzzy animals. She would only admit to herself that she was jealous, because the juvenile couple was being given what she'd always wanted: a family. A caring husband and a baby to love. As green with envy as she was, though, she at least got this chance to live vicariously by helping the human with this child.

Rosalie stopped suddenly on the muddy bank of the wide stream that ran through their property. Deciding to take a bit longer, thinking surely that the human and the child would be safe enough, she stripped out of her jeans and sweater and dove into the water. To a human, the water would have been slapping cold, too cold to bear. But for Rosalie, it was just a few degrees lower than her body temperature, like taking a dip in a cool swimming pool; cleansing and refreshing. Clouds of mud and flakes of red floated around her body as she rinsed the grime off herself and ran long pale fingers through her hair, picking out bits of leaves and twigs.

Her preternatural senses picked up movement just inside the trees, and Rosalie lifted her head slightly, mostly unconcerned. Then a familiar smell reached her, and she rolled her eyes when she realized that it was the human's pet, lurking in the forest. Jacob, the dog's name was, but she preferred calling him Fido. It was fitting, the way he danced around the human's heels, begging for a moment of her affection like a treat. Why he had to lie about in the house was beyond her; other than leaving traces of his stink on the furniture he served no purpose. At least he was easy on the eyes, especially running around without a shirt like he did. If he were ugly, she didn't think she could stand it.

Now, it seemed, he was spying on her, the little pervert. Rosalie leaned back in the water, arms floating at her sides, toes curling in the muddy bottom of the stream, her head back, and hair fanned out across its surface.

"What do you want, dog?" she asked in a bored voice. He was of no concern to her at the moment. There was no answer, and when she looked back his way after a few moments, she wasn't surprised to see the enormous reddish-brown wolf standing at the edge of the water, looking at her.

Leave it to the human to have a shape-shifter as a pet. The pack of dogs foolishly called themselves werewolves, and no one seemed inclined to correct them.

"You know, Peeping Toms are normally sneaky. I thought that was the point of it, to leave your perversion undetected." Rosalie looked back to the sky, starlight now joining the moon to glint her skin. She was aware of his every move as he shifted from paw to paw in the mud then melted back into his human form, standing there just as naked as she was under the water.

"I'm not a Peeping Tom," he said, watching her despite his words, "and I have to say I'm impressed. Undetected? Perversion? Barbie knows her big words." He applauded a sarcastic grin on his face.

The water rippled under her as Rosalie lazily turned her head to glare at him, and then raised her arm to send a one-finger salute his way.

"Oh, feisty," Jacob taunted, crossing his arms over his well-defined chest. Rosalie certainly noticed the way his muscles bulged when he moved. She let her eyes rove from his almost adorably handsome face, with its dark eyes normally crinkled in a smile, slightly button nose, full lips and white teeth flashing against tanned skin. He was muscled, but not so bulgy that it was off-putting, with biceps that she could do chin-ups from and washboard abs. Then there were the other bits that Rosalie was seeing for the first time, and they were nothing to sneeze at, either.

Rosalie realized she'd been staring when his rumbling laughter filled the air.

"Who's perverted now?" he asked, seeming unruffled by her perusal. "Wait, here, I'll let you get the full image." And he slowly turned in a circle, and-

Jesus, I could amuse myself for hours with that ass and a roll of quarters, Rosalie thought.

The unfamiliar stirrings of lust had begun building inside of her, which caught Rosalie off guard. She'd always been skittish of thoughts of sex and intimacy. She was sure that her sexuality issues were therapy worthy, and Carlisle, her father figure, had offered to talk with her many times over the seventy years of her immortal life. But she preferred to keep them buried, firmly closed behind a little door of denial.

Yet here, staring at this shape shifter whose amused smile had melted away to something else, Rosalie found that she wanted him. She wanted him badly. Jacob's arms were still across his chest, and he was looking down at her, eyes darkened with what she knew was lust, and the sight of his erection, half-swollen, was enough to send the nervous butterflies in her stomach fluttering.

She tried to remind herself, as she floated farther into the water, that he was supposed to be her enemy, but she couldn't for the life of her remember why. Anyway, they were allies at the moment, weren't they? He had annexed from his pack to protect the human. So there was really no reason why they couldn't, was there?

"Why don't you join me? Water's nice," Rosalie heard herself saying, marveling at her steady voice, when her insides were dancing.

"Really?" he asked, the question loaded in more ways than one. Jacob took a step forward, water now lapping at his bare toes.

Rosalie swallowed thickly. "Yeah."

She floated further as he waded into the water. He disappeared under for a few moments before resurfacing, slicking his hair back with his hands. They stared at each other, several feet of water separating them, not knowing what to say; nerves of consensual first times warring.

"You were right," Jacob said, taking a tentative step toward her, water flowing around his massive body. "Water is nice."

"Mm," she hummed in agreement, arms coming up to cover her submerged bare chest. Jacob was coming closer, but Rosalie stayed where she was, watching him. His face was so clear, unguarded, and completely open to her. There was minute hesitation there. Rosalie knew that he loved the human, and she knew that he had to be wrestling with that, even though he knew that Bella would never love him as much as he loved her. Rosalie could read all of that in his features, which was something completely new to her - vampires were so secretive and suspicious, no matter how civil or humanized they were.

He was now only inches from her, arms passive at his sides, as if he knew what she needed, could tell how nervous she was. Jacob was waiting for her.

"Nice night, huh?" His voice was a steady, deep rumble. "Real clear. I never realized what the moonlight did to your skin." Jacob's hand came up slowly, the pad of his thumb barely touching the swell of her cheekbone. "Beautiful."

Rosalie's lips twitched. "What happened to leech?" she asked, unconsciously turning her face toward his hand.

Jacob grinned. "What happened to Fido?" he asked in return.

She reached up to touch his face, much the same way he was touching hers. Then he was leaning down, and she was moving up to meet him, their lips meeting for the first time. It was soft and slow, Jacob's lips molding against her hard ones, and Rosalie gasped at the heat of him. He was the only thing that had warmed her in seventy years, and her hands greedily went to his shoulders, trying to soak up as much of that heat as she could. At her gasp, Jacob took the chance to slide his tongue along her bottom lip, tasting the sweetness of her skin.

They were equally surprised at how their scents, which carried a natural aversion toward the other, seemed to change at the first touch of skin to skin. The deterrent in their chemical make-up melted away, revealing what lay beneath. For her, he smelled like what she remembered sugar cookies to smell like when she'd been human; for him it was lilies, fresh-picked and wild.

Rosalie was pressed against his chest, his arms around her waist, and they were still lost in their kiss, wrapped up in each other as she instinctively wound her legs around his hips. Jacob moved backward toward the bank of the stream, sprawling on his back once he was there. Her legs straddled him on either side, knees sinking into the soft mud. Jacob let her have control and his hands went her hips as her hair fell in wet clumps around them, curtaining their faces. Rosalie could feel his heart beating wildly in his chest, could hear his pulse race in the way his blood rushed, and he was fully erect against her. She let her hands slide down his chest to experimentally wrap her long fingers around him, and Jacob moaned against her lips.

He was still as he could be under her, hands caressing at her sides, letting her explore. She wondered how he could possibly know what it was that she needed to calm the nerves inside of her, nerves that she hadn't been able to overcome in nearly a century.

It wasn't enough. Rosalie wanted more, craved more with every inch of her body. She pulled her mouth from his, and Jacob slid his lips against the skin of her neck, over the scar of Carlisle's bite. His hands were now moving across her back, fingertips tracing up her spine.

Steeling her resolve, Rosalie positioned herself, and then slowly sank down onto him. She closed her eyes and fought tooth and nail against the horror that threatened to rise in her mind. Instead, she forced herself to focus on the way his searing heat filled her, the wonderful sound that escaped his lips as she surrounded him, the beating of his heart and the rasp of his breath against her skin. After a few seconds, she felt safe enough to make a tentative move, and she didn't want to contain the moan that left her as she rose up and sank back down.

"Oh God," Jacob moaned as she began to move clumsily over him, finding her rhythm. She sat up a little, her hands moving up his body to rest on his strong shoulders as his moved down to grip her hips. Her movements became smoother, more confident as she set a pace that would have been just a little too much had Jacob been completely human.

Rosalie's head was thrown back, hair tumbling down over her shoulders. She'd never felt like this before. Ever. It was as if he was a delightful fire, burning her from the inside out, and she felt alive for the first time since her change.

It was over far too soon for her liking, her falling before him, and he lay panting under her as she stilled on top of him. Jacob's eyes were squeezed shut and his head fell back against the ground with a wet smack, before he looked up as he felt her move off of him.

Rosalie sat beside him in the mud, mind reeling over what this could mean. That intense fire was still burning in her chest, and she had no idea...

She had to get home. To her own home, where she could think.

Rosalie stood and, without looking at Jacob, picked her clothes up from where they were piled on the wet ground. She pulled them on, almost too fast for his eyes to follow, and with the smallest of hesitations, she left him and ran home.

**..**

Later, in the morning, Rosalie had known the exact moment he'd entered the house. She'd been in her bedroom, still wrapped in the robe she'd donned after she'd showered to wash away the mud, laying across her bed. She'd heard his heartbeat first, nearing the house, and then she could smell him - still that sugar cookie scent, now mixed with her own. He'd hesitated before coming in, and Rosalie's breath hitched in its habitual pattern. He'd gone to the human, only to find her asleep on the couch, her vampire husband kneeling on the floor, hands on her distended belly, whispering to the child. Rosalie had known that Jacob would find them this way- that had been the way she'd found them when she returned. Edward, apparently, had had an epiphany upon realizing that he could hear the child's thoughts, and was now firmly on Team Baby.

Rosalie had sat up, listening, as he'd paused, watching them. She'd known from the way his breath hitched, and his heart accelerated that he was there, seeing the tableau of love. She'd wanted to go to him when she heard his footsteps move through the house and back through the door he'd come in, closing it quietly behind him. Ever considerate of his human, not wanting to disturb her sleep.

He hadn't returned to the house, but she could feel him outside, not too far away. Never too far away, pacing in the forest.

That warmth that she was sure would fade remained lodged in her chest, like a glowing light. Rosalie had no idea what this was, but she did know that it had cracked the ice that had cocooned her for so many years, shielding her away from basic emotions.

She had no idea what it was, but she knew that she didn't want it to stop.

It was with that thought that she rose from her bed, where she'd been laying sentient the entire day - with Edward fully on board, there was no reason for her to play guard dog - and moved into her bathroom to comb her hair. It had air-dried and was now a tangled mess, but she made quick work of it. She then absently pulled on a pair of jeans and a gray top with a twisted neckline. As an afterthought, she grabbed a black button-up sweater, just in case she ended up far enough away from her house to run across hikers.

She belatedly realized that she'd left him rather rudely the night before, but it was too late now. She was already out of the house, and into the trees. What if he didn't want to see her? Maybe it had been just a one-time thing for him, a way to relieve the stress of their current situation. The last thing Rosalie wanted to do was make a fool of herself, or seem desperate. But she wanted more of his heat, more of his touch, just _more_.

The night before had opened an entirely new world to her, a world of actually _feeling_. A few times, she'd gone to Jasper, the member of their little family that she was closest to, and had asked him to help her. In her weakest moments, she'd asked him to use his abilities to fill her with fabricated contentment and love, but it was nothing compared to the lust and desire she'd felt with Jacob last night.

Rosalie found him in his wolf form, pacing between the trees, head hanging low. With only the smallest of pauses, she went to him. He stopped his pacing when she was only a few feet away, her hand held up as if to touch him. Pale, slender fingers hesitatingly touched behind his left ear, and Rosalie smiled a little when he leaned into the contact. With a small whine, Jacob lowered his body to the forest floor, bringing up plumes of leaves and dirt and she followed him down, curling into his side, stroking his fur.

She wanted to say something to him, anything to ease what he may be feeling. At that moment, Jacob turned his face to nuzzle under her chin, his dark brown eyes closing gently as they relaxed into each other. Rosalie couldn't find words to comfort him, or ask what he may want of her, but in that moment, words didn't matter.


End file.
